Brew: Still clinging to consciousness, a woman drags herself out
of her office, and collapses onto the street, crying for help.
A police officer arrives on scene.
What he finds lying on the floor of the bank, are 12 bodies.
This had been his third attempt in the
last 3 months, and he finally succeeded.
He was equipped with no weapons, just
one business card and a handful of pills.
What followed was the deadliest bank heist
in history— led by one evil mastermind.
At 3:20 pm, Yoshida Takejiro, the manager of the
Tokyo branch of the Teikoku Imperial Bank, started
toward the front entrance to lock up after a long day.
Moments before he was able to shut the doors, a man wearing a
loose-fitting white coat over a brown suit slid his foot in the door.
The man claimed to be an officer with the Japanese
Welfare Department, and pointed to an armband to prove it.
He carried a small leather case, reminiscent of a doctor’s bag.
He bowed respectfully, and introduced himself as Dr.
Yamaguchi Jiro, saying that he was there on orders from
General MacArthur’s headquarters, the commander of the United
States occupying force in Japan after the end of the WWII.
Yamaguchi told the manager that his office was concerned
about an epidemic of dysentery in the neighbourhood, and
he was there to inoculate everyone against the infection.
Yoshida called all 14 other employees and one of their
children who was at the bank that day, into a back office where
Yamaguchi explained that everyone needed to take 2 sets of meds.
The first was a pill, and the second was a liquid
medication he poured into everyone’s tea cups.
He was insistent that the second set of medication
would need to be taken immediately after the first.
He told everyone that the drug was very potent, and
they should “be careful not to let it touch their
teeth” and to “just stick out their tongue a little”.
The doctor then took out a large bottle from his bag and poured
a dose for each person there, mixing the substance with some tea.
He shouted “dōzo!” meaning “go ahead!” and everyone downed their mixture.
Some of the people began to cough violently, but he told
them that the second dose would help them find relief.
He poured more of the liquid into their cups, and they quickly drank it.
One of the employees complained that their throat was
burning, and asked if they could gargle some water.
Everyone hurried to a water fountain, but before they could get
a drink, Nichimura Hideiko, one of the accountants, collapsed.
He fell to the floor, his eyes glazing over.
Another employee, Takeuchi Masako, bolted for the manager’s
office, but her body gave way and she crashed to the floor as well.
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Howard: Mark my words, once I achieve my
lordhood, you meatbags will kneel before me.
Kneel and despai—
Brew: Around them, the rest of the bank
employees fell to the ground, thrashing in pain.
Wasting no time, Yamaguchi strolled over to a counter,
and shovelled as much cash as he could get into his bag,
about 164,000 yen, and a check for about 17,400 yen.
The equivalent of a little over 7 thousand US dollars today.
Takeuchi, still clinging to consciousness, dragged
herself from the back office to the front door, where
she collapsed out into the street, crying for help.
A police officer heard her calls, and arrived on the scene
moments later to find what was later described as a battlefield.
12 hellishly still, slowly cooling bodies lay strewn across
the floor of the bank, frozen in a tableau of terror.
Of the 16 who took Yamaguchi’s “medicine”, only 3 survived..
The trio were immediately taken to the hospital
where their stomachs were pumped and given antidotes.
Despite their terrible condition, they all survived.
Upon investigation of the teacups Yamaguchi poured the “medicine” into,
forensic investigators found traces of potassium cyanide, a deadly poison.
In the end, 12 people died, including the young child, marking the incident
as the deadliest mass killing in Japanese history for the next 40 years.
In the following days, Officer Ohori, investigating
the incident, found that the same man had gone to
two other banks leading up to the mass killing.
Three months prior to the Teikoku incident, a man calling himself
Matsui Shigeru claiming to be from the Ministry of Health and Welfare
Prevention Bureau, showed up at the Yasuda bank’s Ebara Branch right at
closing time giving the bank manager the same spiel about inoculation.
There were 18 people inside the bank at
the time, and all 18 drank the mixture.
Fortunately, the poison was too weak, and no one was harmed.
Another attempt, this time at the Bank of
Tokyo’s Mitsubishi branch, failed as well.
A man with a business card for Dr.
Jiro Yamaguchi arrived, saying he needed to disinfect
the bank and give all the employees some “medicine”.
The bank manager was skeptical, but before they
could find out more “Yamaguchi-san” had already fled.
Witness testimonies showed police that it was clear that Dr. Matsui and Dr. Yamaguchi were the same person.
They described him as a middle aged man with a
scar on his chin and a mole on his left cheek.
Japanese culture puts great emphasis on the trading of business cards.
There are many rules of etiquette, and it’s considered rude
not to give one out to everyone you meet in a business setting.
So the man claiming to be Dr. Yamaguchi and Dr. Matsui gave out business cards to help corroborate his identity.
Police didn’t know who he was, but his
assumed identities were a good place to start.
Not long after they began pursuing this
line of inquiry, they discovered that Dr.
Jiro Yamaguchi was a total fabrication, aand the business
card was created at a shop in Ginza, a neighbourhood of Tokyo.
Dr.
Matsui on the other hand was a real person, and he lived in Sendai.
Lucky for him, he was a well known member of the community,
and was far from Tokyo at the time of the mass killing.
The real Dr. Matsui had a rock solid alibi, however this was still a major
break in the case for the investigators looking into the incident.
Police found that the good doctor had recently printed a set
of 100 business cards, and had traded away 96 of them in recent
weeks, and since the killer had to have met him in order to get
their hands on his business cards, he had to be among those 96.
The police then found the identities of 96 of the people that Dr.
Matsui had given business cards to, and slowly, one by one, went down
their list checking off anyone that had an alibi the day of the killing.
Before long, authorities had managed to account for the locations of all
but one of the people on their list, an artist named Hirasawa Sadamichi.
Speaking with the authorities, Dr Matsui recalled meeting Hirasawa
on a ferry on the way to Hokkaido, however police couldn’t
find any trace of the man, save for records that his home in
Tokyo had caught fire twice under mysterious circumstances.
Investigators went to speak with Hirasawa at his home, but he wasn’t there.
His wife told them that her husband had gone to Otaru city
to be with his parents who were very sick at the time.
However, when police tracked down Hirasawa in Otaru city, they
were surprised to find his parents in a perfect bill of health.
Asking Hirasawa what he was doing the day of the killing, he told
them that he was travelling to the Mitsubishi exhibition to meet with
President Oshima of the Oshima Land Company to sell him a painting.
Officers asked Hirasawa about his meeting with Dr.
Matsui, to which he replied “of course I remember Dr.
Matsui.
We exchanged cards while on the ferry to Hokkaido.”
At this time, officers also noted that Hirasawa had
a mole on his left cheek and a scar under his chin.
They asked him if they could give them Dr Matsui’s card, but
Hirasawa told them that he’d been robbed by a pickpocketer
not long after he met the doctor, and no longer had the card.
A check had been stolen from the bank the day of
the killing, and had been cashed the day following.
Investigators watching Hirasawa’s home posed as various
workers, including delivery drivers, repairmen, and bill
collectors, in order to get a sample of the artist’s handwriting.
Comparing the handwriting between Hirasawa’s clandestine
signature, and the signature on the check, a handwriting
expert determined that they were written with the same hand.
Not only that, but the police also found that Hirasawa gave his
wife 80,000 yen shortly after the killing, and his bank account
showed a deposit of 44,500 yen despite the fact that only days
earlier, Hirasawa and his wife were asking friends for loans.
When police questioned him about the money, he told them that it came
to him from the sales of paintings, and gifts from wealthy patrons.
However, when police asked around to see who Hirasawa had sold paintings
to, they found that he had only sold enough to make about 100,000 yen.
Where did the rest of the money come from?
By August, inspector Ohori had had enough.
With the missing business card, the mysterious deposits, and the lack of
a solid alibi, he arrested Hirasawa and began the prosecution process.
Police raided the artist’s home, and found a brown suit and
leather bag similar to the one the killer had on his person.
Moreoever, two of the survivors identified Hirasawa as the
murderer, but witnesses of other incidents could not confirm.
Police grilled Hirasawa, who was unable to
explain the contradictions in his story.
Eventually, he capitulated, and admitted his guilt.
“You are right, I am the man”, he said.
The people inside the Teikoku bank were given
potassium cyanide, but what is it exactly?
Cyanide is a naturally occurring chemical that can be found
in many plants, including cassava, lima beans, almonds, and
the pits of some fruits, like apricots, apples, and peaches.
It’s a common poison that’s been used in warfare
and, well, regular ol’ murder for thousands of years.
Cyanide can exist in a gaseous form as hydrogen
cyanide and cyanogen chloride, or in a crystallised
form, as sodium cyanide and potassium cyanide.
Regardless of the form, if you come into
contact with it, you’ll have a bad time.
The most common cause of cyanide poisoning is actually smoke
inhalation from house fires, and it’s also released in cigarette smoke!
Hydrogen cyanide is a byproduct of burning
tobacco in an oxygen deficient environment.
So tack that down as one of the 10 billion reasons not to smoke.
Cyanide affects the central nervous
system, and your cardiovascular systems.
A lethal dose of cyanide gas will kill in
seconds, while salts lead to a death in minutes.
If you’ve been exposed to a lethal dose, you
likely don’t have time to notice the effects.
That said, this is what you should look out
for if you had a less-than-lethal exposure.
Central nervous system symptoms include headaches,
anxiety, confusion, lethargy, seizures, and a coma.
Cardiovascular symptoms include a slowed heart rate followed by
a rapid heart rate, low blood pressure, and trouble breathing.
Survivors of cyanide poisoning occasionally develop
Parkinson's disease, and other neurological disorders.
Treatments always begin with removing exposure.
In some cases this includes removing clothing
and diligently washing skin with soap.
If it’s been ingested, then activated charcoal
may be used which binds to many drugs and toxins.
Cyanide kills by preventing cells from using oxygen.
It does this by going into your mitochondria, the powerhouse
of the cell as we’re legally required to call it, and
binds to a portion of a molecule called cytochrome oxidase.
The next step for medical staff is to prevent, or reverse this process.
First is the use of a cyanide antidote kit, which uses a 3 component
process of amyl nitrate, sodium nitrate, and sodium thiosulfate, to
“pull” cyanide away from your cells by giving it a more attractive binder.
The second method uses Hydroxocobalamin, a manufactured version
of vitamin B12 that also contains cobalt, which, like our first
method, provides a stronger bind for cyanide, turning it into
cyanocobalamin, which the body can then pass out via urine.
Shortly after Hirasawa confessed, he recanted his confession and
claimed a defence of partial insanity, but this wasn’t enough
to keep Japanese courts from sentencing him to death by hanging.
Hirasawa’s lawyers were smart, however, and argued that the
Japanese constitution forbade individuals from taking their
own lives, and hanging technically fell under the purview
of “self-strangulation”, therefore he could not be executed.
Hirasawa spent the remaining 32 years of his life as a
death row inmate, writing an autobiography titled “My
Will: The Teikoku Bank Case”, and continued to produce art.
In 1981 his lawyers argued for his release saying that the death
penalty had a 30-year statute of limitations, but the courts rebuted
the argument, saying that the statute only applied to situations
where death row inmates had escaped, evading capture for 30 years.
Hirasawa died on May 10th, 1987, at the age of 95 of pneumonia in a prison
hospital, this didn’t stop his supporters from trying to clear his name.
By 2003 they’d made 19 separate appeals for retrial
to the Tokyo High Court, and they were all denied.
There were issues in the case that
contributed to Hirasawa’s widespread support.
During the original trial, he had claimed that his confession was
coerced, taken by use of brutal, non-stop interrogation and torture.
His lawyers argued eyewitness testimony could not be trusted,
as only 2 of 40 witnesses actually identified him, and
they had become more unsure of that as the trial went on.
The only hard evidence connecting Hirasawa to the robbery was
the business card that the killer left in the bank, but police
didn’t bother following up on his claim of pickpocketing.
Not only that, Hirasawa’s two sons-in-law told police
that he was playing cards with them at the time
of the massacre, though this alibi was thrown out.
However, his daughter also claimed that he was unable to see
his son-in-law and instead visited her home, staying there until
3:30, but this testimony was ultimately thrown out as well.
It has also been alleged by his supporters that the money
deposited into Hirasawa’s bank account, and the money he
gave to his wife, was obtained through the sale of explicit
paintings, which he wouldn’t have admitted to police.
Another theory claims that since Japanese judges were unwilling to
commit to Hirasawa’s death penalty, they instead chose to move him
from a Tokyo prison to an unheated detention house in Miyagi, where,
supporters claim, the judges hoped he would die of natural causes.
One judge said of the decision, that "If their hearts were
in it, they could have read the record and signed the death
warrant long ago, but they were afraid, and I would be, too."
Cases like these often come attached with conspiracy
theories, and the Teikoku Bank case is no exception.
Many claim a link between Hirasawa and a clandestine Imperial
Japanese chemical and biological warfare group, Unit 731.
Covered up by the United States in exchange for research
conducted in internment camps in Manchuria during the war.
Takehiko, Hirasawa’s adopted son, claimed that the police found that the
poison used in the robbery was complex beyond the ability for his father
to produce, and that the two step process was the signature of Unit 731.
US journalist William Triplett in his book Flowering of the Bamboo, claims
to have found hard evidence to corroborate the connection between the
killing and this military R&D group: a memo from General MacArthur’s office
that police were pursuing leads concerning “personnel who attended or
were employed during the war years on a secret army chemical laboratory".
Though nothing has been confirmed.
Supporters argue that money to the sum of 180,000 yen was left behind
at the bank, which wouldn’t make sense if the intent was robbery.
They argue that the excess money proves that it
could not be Hirasawa, who was strapped for cash.
To this day, Hirasawa’s name still remains tethered to this horrible crime.
Whether he did it beyond a shadow of a doubt, or if there are
other possible culprits is beyond our ability to confirm now.
The judges in this case clearly weren’t willing to make that
final decision about capital punishment, and much of the ethical
and philosophical discourse surrounding the death penalty
hinges on whether or not we can execute people, knowing that
we, and the justice systems we’ve built make mistakes sometimes.
Is it moral to put someone to death when there is
even the slightest possibility they could be innocent?
Can we build a justice system that never punishes the wrong person?
Even if we could, how do we ensure that system
is never exploited, or changed for the worse?
It just goes to show that things are usually
much more complicated than we want them to be.
Sometimes, the truth is a tough pill to swallow.
Was that one too dark?
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